


As It Is When It Was

by Argyle



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-21
Updated: 2008-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 05:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>How strange it is to be anything at all.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	As It Is When It Was

**Author's Note:**

> Set directly post-1.08, because I'm totally smitten by the crazy. "Assume the position!"

_SAM: I want to go home._

_GENE: Don't be such a jessy. You can go home later._

_RAY: So. What d'you wanna do now then, Guv?_

_GENE: Pub!_

 

So they went to the pub, Sam and Gene and Chris and Ray piled in the Cortina, and then piled on barstools, and then, much later, all but piled on the floor. It had just been that kind of day: knackering. He felt it in his limbs, the raw ache of stress, so like the pain of too-fast growth. His chest was constricted. His eyes still stung with the green of the woods, light and light between high boughs, until his flesh had tingled with it, tinged olive.

Beneath the elms, Vic looked wan. But out of place, all horns and thorns, ambling over bramble with the gait of great shore bird. Foreign.

And Sam loved his father. Also, Sam hated his father. He'd pulled a gun on his father.

Also, he'd pulled a gun on Gene.

Sam tried to bring it up, cornering him by the dartboard after their third round. Gene squinted into his empty pint glass, and then it was time for a fourth. By the sixth, Sam was self-conscious. Gene's gaze fell on him like an anatomist's knife. By the tenth, Gene was leaning into him, and Sam was leaning into Gene. Everyone else had gone.

*

_Don't leave. I'm begging you._

Sam went to the forest, where the scene had been shoddily closed with rope and wrought bars. He looked around, askance, and told himself he wasn't looking. There was nothing to see. No, there was a bullet on the ground beneath the dead weeds, glinting in the dusk, just where he'd dropped it.

Where the plods had missed.

Bloody useless. He shook his head, then pocketed the thing.

When the rain started, the sound was footsteps down a corridor.

*

Sam went to the forest. Almost immediately, he fell to his knees, keening deep in his throat, and then slumped forward, his cheek to the ground. He rubbed dust on his hands; tiny stones tore at his knuckles. It felt right.

He hadn't been abandoned, but rectified. Vic was never any answer worth listening to. Sam knew this intrinsically, down to the pit of his stomach. He should have been grateful. By now, the grit was deep beneath his fingernails, and dirt creased his palms.

Nearby, a magpie settled in low branches. It looked at him, then looked past him.

And suddenly, he thought this: if he listened well enough, ear to the soil, he'd hear it all--

A lorry hauled tinned vegetables down Deansgate. Children played at war in the park. A cook dumped cod into hot oil. The final credits of _Paper Moon_ rolled to an empty cinema. Seventeen couples fucked, and seventeen more fell into lazy sleep. An aging copper drew a dogend clear to the tip, unable to forgo that last little bit.

*

Sam drifted.

He sat nestled at the foot of a tree, legs drawn up and feet flat to the ground. There was pressure on his back, a cramp straight down his spine; if he moved, the pain would leave him gasping.

He was in control. His breath was steady.

And the stars were surprisingly bright, quite unlike those beneath the heady orange glow of 2006. True night didn't exist there. But now he found himself puzzling over formations, trying -- and failing -- to pick out a single constellation. He only assumed their presence, like myriad insect tunnels just below his feet. Hidden. He took comfort in the movement, the positions which changed while he wasn't paying attention.

At half past two, he was still under the elms.

It was cold. Too cold to move. He huddled into himself, arms folded across his chest and jacket buttoned to the throat; the leather afforded him little warmth. He supposed he must have eventually slept, because the next thing he knew was a hand shaking him, long fingers on this shoulder. But it was the loafer toe to his side that got the final word.

Gene.

Gene took him home.

*

"Catch pneumonia, scrawny bloke like you out playing Robinson Caruso," Gene grumbled, not looking Sam in the eye, but he accepted the proffered glass without a missed beat.

"I don't think I can," Sam said contemplatively. The cot springs creaked as he settled back down, knee nearly brushing Gene's thigh. It was tempting to let gravity do its worst, but he'd run out of kitchen roll and didn't want a mess. He sipped his whisky. And then: "Can I? Do you get sick in dreams?"

Gene gave him a look.

"Sorry." Sam sucked a breath through his teeth. "So how'd you know?"

"What, where to find you? Easy. Remember that concussion?" Gene asked, but continued without waiting for an answer. "Knocked out cold as a kipper. Which gave 'em the opportunity to put on a tracking pin. Tiny, like. Just at the base of the skull. You, my dear Tyler, are the new number thirty-eight."

Sam blanched. "Really?"

"Have you seen any great bloody fishbowls following you around? Caught a ride in a Mini Moke lately? Christ, you oughta trade your warrant card for half a brain."

"Sorry," Sam said again, almost meaning it this time. Then, without thinking, he reached forward and set a cool palm atop Gene's warm one. Gene threw back his drink, unperturbed.

So Sam looked without looking: the flat was horrible. The flat was the last place he wanted to be. He was faintly ashamed of it, of the tight, well-trodden floors, and the drapes which stank all the more for midday sun. It hadn't changed since the day he got there.

He waited.

And this is not what Gene said: "I thought you'd lost it."

But rather, "Happens to everyone. One moment you're fine, the next you're off your head." He didn't move his hand. But rather, he moved forward to kiss Sam, tentatively at first, as though trying to talk sense to a hare and all the while aware it might bolt. Sam kissed him back.

It wasn't particularly well-timed or coordinated, but it was right.

When Sam pulled away, he asked, "How'd you know where to find me?"

Gene sniffed. "Been following you, hadn't I? Ever since that day in the snooker club, you've looked like shit. Thought you picked up a habit, and then seeing you slinking off to the sticks— Well. When I saw you sitting there, sagged over like a pile of rags, you might've been trying to channel your dead Gran for all the point of it."

"Yeah." Sam slid his fingertips over Gene's thigh, surveying either side before he settled on Gene's hip. "I didn't know what to do. You know? I'd been waiting so long. Felt the anticipation building until there was nothing else, but then it was over—"

"Normal thing would be to take up squash."

"Can't. Wrist injury in the Sixth Form."

"Really? Did my half brained bastard of a DI just admit his weak point?"

"Suppose the heavens'll open up," Sam chuckled. Deftly, he freed Gene's shirt from his trousers and smoothed a hand over the small of Gene's back. He felt Gene's breath hitch. That was normal.

"Better watch out for anvils."

Sam kissed him again, just for that. But of course there was nowhere else to go.

**Author's Note:**

> "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways you yourself have altered." -- Nelson Mandela


End file.
